18 Ergebnisse.

Hoping to obtain status and affluence, Vautrin makes a plan to help Lucien infiltrate Parisian high society and marry rich, but his plan is challenged when Lucien falls in love. Set in Paris during the 19th century, Honoré de Balzac’s Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life follows the scandalous and shocking story of two social climbing men.

During Napoleon’s expedition in Egypt, a young soldier falls captive to Ottoman forces. Miraculously, he manages to escape, taking with him a horse and a limited assortment of supplies and weapons. On his journey through the desert, he takes refuge in a cave, where he tames and befriends a panther. A Passion in the Desert is a masterful short story by French author Honoré de Balzac.

Hoping to obtain status and affluence, Vautrin makes a plan to help Lucien infiltrate Parisian high society and marry rich, but his plan is challenged when Lucien falls in love. Set in Paris during the 19th century, Honoré de Balzac’s Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life follows the scandalous and shocking story of two social climbing men.

Eugénie is the daughter of Felix Grandet, a businessman and landowner whose extravagant wealth is matched only by his commitment to miserliness. The Grandets are by far the richest family in Saumur, and their house is, from the outside, the finest building around-but inside, both the state of the home and the physical and mental wellbeing of its occupants have been neglected to the point of disrepair. As suitors come to the Grandet house to vi...

A young law student moves to Paris from southern France only to become enamored with life in the city, its abundance of wealth and lack of clear-cut morals. Rastignac lives in a boarding house owned by Madame Vauquer, a widow whose other tenants include the formerly wealthy Jean-Joachim Goriot and the hardened criminal known as Vautrin. Father Goriot is a story of desire and ambition set during the Bourbon Restoration, a time of widespread soc...

Sylvain Pons is a kind man and musician with two distinct passions: his art collection and his taste for gourmet dining. Other than his loyal friend and fellow musician Wilhelm Schmucke, the people in Pons’ life generally disdain him. His cousins, the wealthy and vain M. and Mme. Camusot de Marville, dread his regular visits, but nevertheless entertain him with good food and polite conversation. When the value of his paintings is discovered, h...

Musing on the widespread nature of marital infidelity in French life, Honoré de Balzac provides a satirical critique of the institution of marriage and the fraught gender relations between men and women. In a series of meditations, he argues that married women frequently take lovers because they are sheltered too severely before marriage, leading to intense and justifiable unhappiness.

Bette Fischer, a bitter and contemptuous woman, seeks to embroil her extended family in a series of romantic scandals. With the help of Valérie Marneffe, a beautiful and willing accomplice, she plays on the weaknesses and desires of her victims in order not only to expose their vanity and egotism, but to excuse her own. Cousin Bette, arguably the final great work by master novelist Honoré de Balzac, is an intensely emotional work of fiction th...

An epic novel of ambition and betrayal, Lost Illusions is the story of Lucien Chardon, a talented and restless poet from the town of Angoulême who longs for literary success and a life in Paris. As he struggles to overcome the obstacles of poverty and a lack of social standing, Lucien is forced to make decisions which not only threaten the livelihoods of those closest to him, but gradually erode his sense of reality itself. Lost Illusions is o...

Musing on the widespread nature of marital infidelity in French life, Honoré de Balzac provides a satirical critique of the institution of marriage and the fraught gender relations between men and women. In a series of meditations, he argues that married women frequently take lovers because they are sheltered too severely before marriage, leading to intense and justifiable unhappiness.

Sylvain Pons is a kind man and musician with two distinct passions: his art collection and his taste for gourmet dining. Other than his loyal friend and fellow musician Wilhelm Schmucke, the people in Pons’ life generally disdain him. His cousins, the wealthy and vain M. and Mme. Camusot de Marville, dread his regular visits, but nevertheless entertain him with good food and polite conversation. When the value of his paintings is discovered, h...

Bette Fischer, a bitter and contemptuous woman, seeks to embroil her extended family in a series of romantic scandals. With the help of Valérie Marneffe, a beautiful and willing accomplice, she plays on the weaknesses and desires of her victims in order not only to expose their vanity and egotism, but to excuse her own. Cousin Bette, arguably the final great work by master novelist Honoré de Balzac, is an intensely emotional work of fiction th...

Sarrasine, a young sculptor, wins a competition before traveling to Rome, where he attends an opera performance starring the beautiful Zambinella. He falls in love with her immediately and becomes increasingly obsessed with courting her and idealizing her body, unaware of the secret she lives with. Sarrasine is a novel of romance and mystery by Honoré de Balzac.

When Henri, a young, rich man, becomes riddled with a grotesque passion for a mysterious young woman, his obsession leads to an affair filled with lust, jealousy, deceit, and chaotic emotion. The Girl with the Golden Eyes is a thrilling romantic novella within Honoré de Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine series, which sought to depict a compelling and complete portrait of society.

Trapped in a loveless marriage, Victomtesse de Beauseant lives her life as a recluse, until Gaston, a young man recovering from illness, falls in love with her. Set in a small, provincial town in Normandy, France, The Deserted Woman by Honoré de Balzac depicts the touching, but tragic love story of a young man and a woman stuck in a marriage.

A young law student moves to Paris from southern France only to become enamored with life in the city, its abundance of wealth and lack of clear-cut morals. Rastignac lives in a boarding house owned by Madame Vauquer, a widow whose other tenants include the formerly wealthy Jean-Joachim Goriot and the hardened criminal known as Vautrin. Father Goriot is a story of desire and ambition set during the Bourbon Restoration, a time of widespread soc...

An epic novel of ambition and betrayal, Lost Illusions is the story of Lucien Chardon, a talented and restless poet from the town of Angoulême who longs for literary success and a life in Paris. As he struggles to overcome the obstacles of poverty and a lack of social standing, Lucien is forced to make decisions which not only threaten the livelihoods of those closest to him, but gradually erode his sense of reality itself. Lost Illusions is o...

Eugénie is the daughter of Felix Grandet, a businessman and landowner whose extravagant wealth is matched only by his commitment to miserliness. The Grandets are by far the richest family in Saumur, and their house is, from the outside, the finest building around—but inside, both the state of the home and the physical and mental wellbeing of its occupants have been neglected to the point of disrepair. As suitors come to the Grandet house to vi...